We Are Supposed to Make Mistakes!

In this school of life, we human beings are constantly striving toward perfecting ourselves. That is the spiritual path, one of healing and purification. As we gather more and more experience, through many incarnations, we tend to learn right from wrong. Unfortunately, many of these lessons are learned the hard way, by doing the wrong thing and then dealing with the consequences. Or, as my dad used to say, “You have to pay the Piper.”

So speaking of consequences, what is karma, really? Some people think of it as punishment, like a higher-level justice system imposed on humans to make them pay for their transgressions and harmful acts. But I believe that it is something we agree to at the soul level, rather than something imposed on us.

Yes, there is a Karmic Board, a group of Beings of Light who are well-known among those of us who can communicate with them. But even though their job is to assign karmic backlash, I sense these beings as compassionate and loving—not punishing. They work with your soul to find the best course of action so you will learn lessons you really DO want to learn. Of course, you may not remember that you wanted to learn these lessons when faced with challenges and limitations in life, but this is where faith comes in.

What religions call sins, I call mistakes. Without making mistakes we would never learn what this Earth school has to teach. There is nothing as effective as screwing up big-time then feeling bad about it, to teach us what not to do. When we feel bad, we punish ourselves. In fact, we tend to give ourselves much worse consequences than the Karmic Board would!

I first realized this with an incident when my two sons were young. When we were living in some suburbs of San Diego, my six-year-old son forgot to put his bike in the garage, leaving it out in the yard overnight. Fortunately, it was still there in the morning. Rather than imposing a punishment for this, I asked him what he thought was a fair action to prevent it from happening again. He was silent for a few seconds as he considered it, then he said he should not be allowed to ride his bike for a month. This was far more severe than anything I would have imposed! I thanked him but gave a lighter sentence. He never left it out again.

With hundreds of clients I have seen the same pattern, on a longer time scale. They are so hard on themselves! One mistake and they think they are terrible people, sometimes punishing themselves for many lifetimes! This can cause deep feelings of unworthiness and low self-esteem which may stem from hundreds of years ago. Sometimes the chosen punishment is far greater than needed, and can be the very thing that is holding them back.

We can all benefit from recognizing that we are supposed to make mistakes while living as human beings in this Earth school. As long as we have learned the lessons so we won’t repeat the mistakes, we can forgive ourselves and move forward much more quickly. Time to stop beating themselves up!